Issue 48
C H I N A R EVIEW
Autumn 2009
© Great Britain-China Centre,
2009. All rights reserved
ISSN: 1359-5091
CHINA ’ S LEGAL SYSTEM
BY CHENG LI AND JORDAN LEE
THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT’S SUDDEN
detainment of the famous lawyer Xu Zhiyong in July 2009
sent shock waves through the international community and
rattled lawyers and scholars invested in China’s evolving
legal system. Dr. Xu, a lawyer and activist renowned for his
work on behalf of China’s most disadvantaged and his
commitment to advancing the rule of law in China, was
hardly a legal gadfly out to provoke the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) or challenge one-party rule. Quite
the contrary, he had a clear record of support for
incremental reform, both in his litigation that aimed at the
enforcement of guarantees already enumerated in the
Chinese constitution, and because he had run for and won a
seat in his local People’s Congress in Beijing’s Haidian
District (one of a handful of contested elections
nationwide). He was also roundly considered to be a man of
strong ideals and impeccable integrity, and this sterling
reputation made the grounds of his formal arrest, “suspicion
of evading taxes,” very difficult to swallow.
What can Xu Zhiyong’s experience tell us about
the state of legal reform in China? In the first instance, it is
a blunt reminder that “rule by law” in China (or put less
charitably, “rule of man”) has yet to evolve into substantive
rule of law. It is also a stern admonition to the country’s
expanding lawyerly ranks: steer clear of politically sensitive
cases, the kind that Xu and other “rights protection
Worshipping
Participation
China’s Cart
and
Democratisation God
Shaun Breslin
Page 4
GBCC
projects
● Finance project
● New Judges
● Leadership
Forum
Calum Macleod
Page 8
Professor Mo with Jack Straw, p. 17
Pages 16 & 17
Page 2
lawyers” (weiquan lüshi) find alluring, or face the wrath of
the state. That lawyers and activists are sensitive to this
kind of overt political pressure underscores the uneven
development of China’s legal system and its continued
subordination to the whims of powerful political actors.
This pessimistic view, however, overlooks other
more encouraging trends in Chinese legal reform. Indeed,
the mere fact that Chinese authorities felt the need to foist a
façade of legality upon Xu’s case suggests the extent to
which legal norms have already permeated Chinese society.
After listening to their leaders stress the importance of law
and order for thirty years, the Chinese public has come to
expect, at the very least, a thin patina of legal reasoning to
justify state actions. Moreover, while Xu’s prosecution is
certainly a striking, if altogether too familiar, instance of an
authoritarian state arbitrarily wielding extralegal power, it is
taking place against a backdrop of decades of slow but
steady improvements to the legal system. In addition to the
gradual accumulation of workaday laws and enforcement
procedures, a mundane but important process in its own
right, four key trends bode well for the future of China’s
legal system: the steady accumulation of China’s body of
laws, the blistering growth of the legal profession in
general, its increasing economic autonomy and sense of
professionalism, and the rapidly rising number of Chinese
political elites, including some senior CCP leaders, who
received their academic training in law.
Laying the Foundation for China’s Legal System
Like many policies announced after Deng
Xiaoping assumed power three decades ago, legal reform
began as an open-ended process. With the total anarchy of
the Cultural Revolution still fresh in their minds, delegates
to the December 1978 Third Plenum of the 11th Central
Committee boldly declared: “there must be laws to follow,
these laws must be observed, they must be strictly enforced
and lawbreakers must be dealt with.” In subsequent years,
as the party began the market transition process still
underway, the “laws to follow” category rapidly grew in
number. By March 2009, China’s body of laws included
approximately 231 individual laws, 600 administrative
regulations, 7,000 local rules and regulations, 600
regulations issued by autonomous regions, and a sizable
number of departmental rules governing more quotidian
affairs – a far cry from the legal vacuum of Mao’s China.
Admittedly, many of these laws are unclearly implemented
or insufficiently enforced, but they nonetheless represent an
important foundation on which a more effective system can
be built over time.
The Remarkable Growth of China’s Legal Profession
Nearly keeping pace with this rapid emergence of
a Chinese body of law is a burgeoning legal profession. In
the early 1980s there were only 3,000 lawyers in a country
of over one billion people. By the end of 2008 this group
had expanded 52-fold to 157,000 licensed lawyers and
14,000 registered law firms. If law school enrolment is any
indication – in 2009 China’s 620 law schools will produce
roughly 100,000 law graduates – these numbers will
continue to swell in the coming years. The following factoid
is emblematic of the tectonic shift currently underway in the
profession: in 2004, Peking University Law School’s
enrollment of over 20,000 students – 217 Ph.D. candidates,
China Review Autumn 2009
Front page: graduates from China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing; above, hat-throwing graduation ceremony at Northwest University of Politics and Law, Xi’an
1,128 master’s degree students, 704 undergraduates, 1,200
part-time graduate students, and 17,044 part-time
undergraduates – was roughly equal to the total number of
law students the institution had trained over the preceding
fifty years.
The Legal Profession’s Growing Autonomy
Not only are lawyers more and more numerous;
they also boast an unprecedented level of economic and
political autonomy and an increasing level of
professionalization. Most basically, Chinese lawyers are no
longer considered state officials, and are no longer on the
state’s payroll. The emergence of bar associations,
generously remunerative positions in law firms, and an
uptick in public esteem for the profession have also lent
legal practitioners greater confidence and autonomy.
Although many are content to play the role the CCP
prescribed for them – to lubricate market transactions and
buttress a legal system meant to absorb more of the
increasing number (and variety) of disputes in society – it
seems almost inevitable that the profession as a whole will
develop a sense of mutual self-interest that favours greater
institutionalization of the rule of law. The small but
influential coterie of “rights protection” lawyers has already
made great strides in this direction. In 2003, for example,
after a graphic designer from Hubei province named Sun
Zhigang was beaten to death in Guangzhou after being
detained for not carrying a registration permit, Xu Zhiyong
successfully petitioned the government to repeal the
“custody and repatriation” laws that required the permit in
the first place. Chen Guangcheng and Hu Jia, two activists
who attracted international attention like Xu before being
detained and prosecuted, also managed to amass a series of
small victories. As the legal professional develops in these
different directions, making a deep imprint in society, the
CCP finds itself facing unprecedented challenges from this
new group in a rapidly changing society.
China’s Legal System
Political Power Elites: From Technocrats to Lawyers
During a visit to China in 1998, in a meeting with
his Chinese hosts, President Bill Clinton is rumored to have
exclaimed, “You have too many engineers and we have too
many lawyers… let’s trade!” Although clearly said in jest,
Clinton’s witticism conjures up an important analytical
approach to the study of political elites. An important
theoretical proposition in the Western social science
literature on political elites is that the occupational identities
of political leaders usually has some bearing on other
characteristics of their country’s political system.
Naturally, if political elites happen to have a
personal or professional interest in a certain policy area,
they will strive to leave a legacy of strong leadership in that
area. Technocrats, for example, have been known to devote
special attention to economic growth and technological
development, subjects they studied early in life or centered
their careers around. This is manifestly the case for the
engineer-dominated fourth generation of PRC leadership
still in power. It stands to reason that the upcoming fifth
generation, populated as it is by a higher percentage of
lawyers and social scientists, may seek to have an impact on
the domains of political and legal reform.
According to a detailed look at the biographies of
China’s senior leadership, the percentage of leaders with a
background in law climbed from 3.5% in the fourth
generation to 9.3% in the fifth generation.
More
significantly, many prominent members of the fifth
generation studied law as undergraduates or graduate
Page 3
students, including Vice President Xi Jinping, Executive
Vice Premier Li Keqiang, Director of the CCP Organization
Department Li Yuanchao, Director of the CCP Policy
Research Center Wang Huning, Minister of Justice Wu
Aiying, Governor of Hunan Zhou Qiang, Governor of
Shaanxi Yuan Chunqing, the central government’s chief
representative in Hong Kong Peng Qinghua, and
Procurator-General Cao Jianming. These leaders will run
the country for the most of the next decade and beyond.
Over the last decade a law degree has become a valuable
credential for aspiring political leaders within the CCP, and
the potential consequences of this development for the
Chinese political system deserve greater scholarly attention.
The example of Li Keqiang, a likely successor to
Premier Wen Jiabao, is instructive. He was a member of the
famous class of 1982, the first college class formed when
universities reopened after the Cultural Revolution and
whose admissions criteria replaced political loyalty,
ideological purity, and class background with a meritocratic
national exam. These years formed an exciting period
marked by an enthusiasm among Chinese youth for
absorbing liberal Western ideas. Li enrolled in the
Department of Law at Beijing University, where he actively
participated in public lectures and debates organized by a
variety of interdisciplinary study groups and faculty
members and studied under Professor Gong Xiangrui, a
well-known British-educated expert on Western political
and administrative systems. Li was particularly interested in
foreign constitutional law and comparative government, and
published articles on legal development, scientific
management, rural economic reform, poverty alleviation,
and other socioeconomic issues of the day. Although Xi
Jinping, Hu Jintao’s likely successor, has a more honorific
degree in law, it is reasonable to expect that as the
percentage of senior leadership with specialized training in
law increases, the likelihood that the party will focus
greater attention on the legal system will also increase.
What lies ahead
Xu Zhiyong’s current travails are a reminder that
even if China’s legal system has come a long way in a short
period of time, neither its most vocal votaries nor the CCP
can afford to rest on their laurels. The state has since
released Xu, bowing to domestic and international pressure.
As lawyers continue to push the envelope in society and
politicians with legal backgrounds proliferate within the
party’s senior leadership, legal reform is likely to become
an increasingly pressing issue. That a similar phenomenon
occurred in the 1980s in both Taiwan and South Korea, and
that both then made successful transitions to democracy, is
ample food for thought. The paradoxical relationship
between the demands of advanced legal reform and
continued CCP interference in the legal system and harsh
treatment of the country’s most independent lawyers and
NGO activists is a defining characteristic of present-day
Chinese politics. China’s future will hinge, to a large
degree, on whether the continued development of
constitutionalism and the rule of law can resolve this
impasse.
Crown copyright
Gordon Brown and China’s President, Hu Jintao
Cheng Li and Jordan Lee both work at the Brookings
Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center in Washington,
DC, where Dr. Li is also director of research
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China Review Autumn 2009
PARTICIPATION AND
DEMOCRATISATION
BY PROFESSOR SHAUN BRESLIN
IN SEPTEMBER 2004, the Central Committee (CC) of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) met for its annual full
plenary meeting. Although elected as Party leader some two
years earlier, many observers saw this meeting as the
moment that Hu Jintao could finally break out of the
shadow of his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and assert his own
leadership style and philosophy; indeed, it was at this
meeting that Jiang relinquished his last leadership position,
Chair of the Party’s Military Affairs Commission, to Hu.
In addition to leadership changes, the key task for
the plenum was to reflect on the Party’s ruling capacity –
and the verdict was damming. Based on the deep lessons
from the experience of ruling parties across the world the
official communiqué exhorted party members to prepare for
danger in a time of peace. The people were losing faith with
the party because individual cadres seemed to be using the
political system to serve their own interests. And if anybody
was in doubt about the severity of the problem, creating a
new paradigm was not only essential for the long term
stability of the country, but a matter of life and death for the
party. The time was right to look forwards to a new
“scientific” development strategy that would be
economically and environmentally sustainable into the
future. The time was also right to look backwards; repeating
Mao’s words of some 60 years before (almost to the day), it
was essential to ensure that party rule existed to “serve the
people” (wei renmin fuwu).
Corrupting faith in the Party
China’s leaders have long pointed to the corrosive
impact of corruption on popular faith in the Party. And
while there might be nothing new about corruption, the
position that officials occupy between the still strong
Chinese state and a rapidly growing economy mean that
there are more opportunities to make large fortunes today
than in pre-reform China. Nevertheless, what was said at
the fourth plenum and what has been done since then
reveals that China’s leaders today are still grappling with
the same key issue that Mao and others strove to resolve
(without much success) in the first three decades of PRC
rule; is it possible to reconcile democracy with single party
rule?
Of course democracy here does not mean the same
as it does in liberal societies – CCP leaders have never had
the creation of competitive elections that could lead to the
overthrow of CCP rule on the agenda. Rather it means
providing for ‘democratic decision making, and democratic
Flickr/ andydoro
The changing face of Chairman Mao: he encouraged criticism,
but not anti-party activity
supervision of power’. The party should rule, but rule on
behalf of the people and not over the people.
The extent to which different interests should be
allowed to be articulated and inputted into one party rule is
not just a Chinese concern. Indeed, much of the early debate
in China itself was influenced by the experiences of the
Soviet Union. Thus, one group of leaders favoured
concentrating decision making in the hands of party
members only. “Transmission belts” –- party led social
organisations, like trade unions and women’s federation
would allow for the party to keep in touch with the interests
of the people, and also for the party to explain its policies to
them. But the job of politics should be reserved for those in
the party with the necessary ideological insights required to
make the best policy for the people.
For Mao, this “small democracy” was nothing
more than bureaucratic control over the people and no
democracy at all. Criticism of the party should be
encouraged and institutionalised and a form of antibureaucratic “big democracy” developed to ensure that the
Participation and Democratisation
Page 5
Flickr/BenSpark
Flickr/ monkeyking
China’s leadership must develop policy to deal with an increasingly complex domestic society
voices of the people were heard, and to stop the party
becoming a smug isolated elite that ruled for itself rather
than on behalf of the masses.
But while criticism was good, anti-party activity
was not. And the problem with opening the political world
to the people was that they tended to express views and
articulate interests that Mao and his supporters didn’t
always like. Moreover, when they entrusted the people with
the task of holding the “capitalist roaders” to account in the
Cultural Revolution, the result was chaos and disorder that
in some parts of the country at least was more or less a civil
war.
Indeed, while post-Mao leaders have faced the
same basic dilemma of finding the best balance between
participation and control, they have done so with the added
burden of the legacy of the Cultural Revolution to consider.
The solution in part was to depoliticise the people. This
might not sound particularly dramatic when compared to
liberal democracies, but the creation of a private sphere in
China was hugely significant. Where the state once
interfered in all parts of everybody’s lives, it withdrew and
allowed a private space that people can occupy, and within
which they can do much as they like. There is one caveat –
and a very important one. This freedom and private sphere
exists only if people accept the political status quo and do
not engage in overt political activity that the state deems to
be illegitimate. Whereas the Maoist state wanted every
Chinese citizen to participate and be politically active, the
post-Mao state encouraged apoliticism, and rewarded
citizens with a private sphere (and of course, a rapidly
growing economy) if they keep to their side of the bargain.
But for the current leadership, this isn’t enough.
This is partly because of political pragmatism and the need
to re-engage the people to help shore up the legitimacy of
one party rule. But it also might partly be because the
leadership needs help in developing policy. It has helped
create an increasingly complex domestic society, has
decided to integrate more with a global economy that was
complicated enough even before the current crisis, and it
doesn’t have all the answers on its own.
A new phase of democratisation?
So we are witnessing the latest attempt to
encourage a form of popular participation that strengthens
‘Whereas the Maoist state
wanted every Chinese citizen to
participate and be politically
active, the post-Mao state
encouraged apoliticism, and
rewarded citizens with a private
sphere (and of course, a rapidly
growing economy) if they keep
to their side of the bargain’
China Review Autumn 2009
Page 6
Flickr/dinesh valke
GEI is one of only a few Chinese civil societies working overseas
on biodiversity projects in Sri Lanka and Laos
Flickr/ g_yulong1
Hu Jintao, above far left, has increasingly used the internet to connect with Chinese citizens, saying
‘We pay great attention to the suggestions and advice from our netizens. We stress the idea of ‘putting people first’ and ‘governing for the
people’. With this in mind, we need to listen to the people’s voices extensively and pool the people’s wisdom when we take actions and make
decisions. The web is an important channel for us to understand the concerns of the public and assemble the concerns of the public’.
rather than weakens single party rule; a new phase of
democratisation. This can and does entail the extension of
elections to more levels of the political system and
subjecting individuals to the scrutiny of local people –
something that is likely to continue to expand in the future.
It also entails the expansion of the rule of law, but when
used in China this does not have the same connections with
the provision of basic political and human rights as it does
in the west. Rather it entails ensuring that the legal system
is in place and functioning effectively to allow citizens
knowledge of what they can and cannot do; and also of
what party state officials can and cannot do and the ability
to challenge illegal action through the courts. Democracy in
this sense entails giving the individual protection from the
arbitrary power of the party-state. In some respects it is also
about enforcing the central leadership’s authority over the
political system – if you like, a new alliance between the
top leaders and the people to ensure that both of their
interests are represented by local leaders who occupy the
key link positions between the people and the system.
Chinese style democratisation
People are also being encouraged to put forward
their ideas and to respond to policy initiatives, with the
internet becoming a key tool in this Chinese style
democratisation. For example, China’s leaders have taken
to answering questions submitted via the internet before
major national meetings – it is perhaps too early to call this
a “tradition” but it may well become one. Individual
delegates to the NPC have also established their own
websites where the public can raise issues or respond to
Flickr/ visionshare
Interest groups are using email to lobby Chinese government
Participation and Democratisation
Page 7
existing policy, and these issues are sometimes taken up by
the delegates within the NPC. Interest groups are also using
email to mass lobby delegates – for example, to ensure that
the legal rights off hepatitis C sufferers are actually
implemented.
The openness and responsiveness of the political
system was the key message at this year’s NPC sessions – a
message that was pushed not just across the TV and print
media, but also in the numerous discussion groups set up on
websites to discuss the key debates in the congress. The
government was in such a responsive mode that it was even
forced to provide full details of its economic stimulation
package by popular pressure:
millions of netizens requested the commission to
release details on the massive spending as they are
concerned with possible fund misuse, corruption
and the effect on macroeconomic control
There was even a suggestion that the government might be
sued if it didn’t release the information freely.
Of course, we need to keep a sense of balance.
This desire for increased participation is a desire for system
conforming participation only; not for system challenging
activity. Dissident views and forms of political participation
(including participation in cyberspace) remain illegitimate
and subject to legal action. Although the specific references
to counterrevolutionary crimes were removed from the legal
code in March 1997, Article 13 of the revised version
includes in its definition of crimes:
acts that endanger the sovereignty, territorial
integrity, and security of the state; split the state;
subvert the political power of the people's
democratic dictatorship and overthrow the socialist
system; undermine social and economic order
which effectively means that promoting democracy is
subject to prosecution under law.
Promoting the national interest
It seems, then, that after six decades the Chinese
leadership is still caught between the desire to encourage
participation on one hand, and the fear of what this
participation might do to party rule on the other. And it is
difficult to see how the current process of democratisation
can reconcile the apparent commitment to openness and
responsiveness with the even more apparent commitment to
keeping the CCP in power. And yet, the party has adapted
and reinvented itself before and survived bigger challenges
than this. It is notable that much of the political discussion
that takes place on the internet in China relates to issues that
we might broadly bracket under the term “nationalism”. At
‘finding a balance between populism
and dictatorship could well be the key
to not just continued economic
progress, but perhaps communist party
rule itself’
chinafotopress
Premier Wen speaking at the National People’ Congress, 2009
as passengers at Beijing railway station walk on
times, the extent of online national feeling is much stronger
than the official position, resulting in policy changing to
come closer to popular opinion. This might suggest that
issues relating to “the national interest” are easier to
respond to than demands to change the domestic
distribution of power, wealth and authority. But it also
suggests that the party can and does listen, and that the
freedom of action of the leadership in some arenas at least
is partly constrained by what the people think and do.
Yao Yang has argued that one of the keys to
China’s economic success in the post Mao era is that the
leadership hasn’t adopted populism in the hope of winning
the support of the people, but has instead been a neutral or
disinterested government. As a result, it has been able to
make long term economic plans that are best for the country
as a whole rather than make short term policy in response to
the demands placed on it by the people – what observers of
capitalist developmental states in the rest of Asia have
referred to as the “relative state autonomy” of decision
makers that insulates them from societal demands. So
following Yao Yang, as we look forward to the next decade
of CCP rule and not just backwards to the previous six, we
might suggest that finding a balance between populism and
dictatorship could well be the key to not just continued
economic progress, but perhaps communist party rule itself.
Professor Shaun Breslin is Professor of Politics and
International Studies at the University of Warwick
Page 8
China Review Autumn 2009
WORSHIPPING CHINA ’ S
CART GOD
CALUM MACLEOD’S POSTCARD FROM ZAOZHUANG
PITY THE DRIVER in Old China, very Old
China. Like the skeleton lying at the reins of a 3,000 yearold horse cart in a tomb near Zaozhuang, east China. When
his boss died, “the driver was either hung or forced to take
poison, so he could keep driving his master in the next
world,” says Li Tianfeng, curator of the Shandong city’s
Cart God museum.
Drivers in today’s China face a different hazard –
each other. Despite low per capita car ownership, the nation
suffers world-beating auto accident rates. But Li has the
answer, he says. This summer, Li started selling a wooden
talisman of the Cart God to displace the ‘lucky’ Chairman
Mao symbols that still swing from some rearview mirrors
here.
And that’s just the start. Later this year, if funding
is secured, labourers will begin building a car theme park
that local officials envision as a Mecca for drivers across
China, and the world. Visitors will tour exhibits of wheeled
technology down the ages, then burn incense at the rebuilt
temple of legendary cart inventor Xizhong, destroyed as
‘superstition’ during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. “If you
pray here, Xizhong will protect you and ensure a safe
journey,” claims Li.
As this newly confident country rediscovers its
ancient civilization, and exploits it for profit, one new
religion is booming. China’s consumers “are simply wild
about cars,” says Michael Dunne, managing director of JD
Power & Associates in Shanghai. At the city’s auto show in
April 2009, “the place was electric with enthusiasm for
products and the future,” says Dunne. “Japan, Frankfurt and
Detroit are very nice, refined shows, but they don’t have
that electricity in the air.”
Seizing the chance to be more mobile than any
generation before them, China’s citizens are bucking
negative global trends and still forking out cash to buy new
cars, usually their first ever auto purchase. This year, the
PRC should overtake the USA as the world’s top auto
market.
The sales boom is good news for cart fanatic Li
Tianfeng, 39, who opened the museum in 2005, and his
long-suffering wife Pan Xue (both pictured above). Over 14
years, Li has spent 1 million yuan collecting antique
wooden carts in and around Zaozhuang, birthplace of
Xizhong, who according to Chinese records invented the
horse cart 4,200 years ago. “Without his perfection of the
horse cart, there would be no modern cars,” argues Li.
Worshipping China’s Cart God
Page 9
Hold the booze! This sign crafts the car and bottle into the Chinese
character jiu, meaning alcohol. Ahead of the PRC’s 60th
anniversary on October 1st 2009, Chinese police are cracking
down on drink driving.
His self-confessed obsession – “I speak to Xizhong
in my dreams,” says Li – provided a welcome distraction
from the rigours of his previous job: family planning
enforcer in nearby Taierzhuang. “Some people didn’t
understand the policy, and had to be forced to have
abortions,” admits Li, who paid a 10,000 yuan fine when
his second child was born five years ago.
Borrowing money from banks and his wife’s quilt
Below: The Shanghai auto show, 25 April 2009.
The Warren Buffett-invested Chinese auto firm BYD, or Build
Your Dreams, makes 25% of the world’s cell-phone batteries –
and is trying break into China’s hybrid car sales market.
“Chinese normally live in apartments, and don’t have garages, so
it’s a big problem to re-charge the batteries,” admits sales
assistant Patrick Zhou, 25. “But the government has promised to
build public charging stations soon, and will offer buyers a $4,400
subsidy,” he says.
Above: Cart inventor Xizhong, in the museum dedicated to cart
heritage in Zaozhuang, Shandong province. The local government
plan to cash in on China’s car boom by rebuilding Xizhong’s tomb
– destroyed by Chairman Mao’s red guards – and creating a car
theme park.
factory, Li steadily built up his collection, surprising local
farmers when offering up to 1,500 yuan for the old cart they
had stopped using years ago. Li says his parents have never
understood why he “wastes money on broken things”, but
Li’s wife does. “I love him, so I love his dream too,” says
Pan, who has given up her business to help Li develop the
‘Cart God Xizhong’ brand, which they have now
trademarked, into a multi-product line from talismans to
tyres and, one day, actual cars.
Far from the gridlock of Beijing, cities like Zaozhuang
still have plenty of room for more cars. Empty, eight-lane
highways serve its vast new administrative district, typical
of many such projects in suburban China. Nationwide,
construction gangs are engaged in the greatest road-building
boom since the United States began linking the Lower 48
with interstate highways in the 1950s. China plans 30,262
miles this decade, and is likely to overtake the USA’s
46,000 miles of interstate by 2020.
To publicize their city, and its most famous son,
Zaozhuang authorities held an auto rally in May at a newly
built dirt track. If they can secure enough funds, the car
theme park will arise near Xizhong’s tomb, and the site of
his temple, where people came to pray for safe journeys
right up to the start of the Cultural Revolution, Li says.
If the couple’s ambitious plans for Cart God goods
take off, then Pan Xue hopes to swap her battered, secondhand Changan Alto – “my BMW” – for the real thing. Pan
loves driving, she says, while Li admits he’s still a fearful
learner.
Words and pictures by Calum Macleod, former GBCC
Director and now Beijing Bureau Chief for USA Today
Page 10
China Review Autumn 2009
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
N ATA S C H A G E N T Z A S S E S S E S D E V E L O P M E N T S I N T H E
C H I N E S E M E D I A O V E R T H E PA S T 6 0 Y E A R S
IN 1949, WHEN ENTERING Shanghai, the
Communist Party of China (CPC) also took over Shenbao
publishing house and transformed the flagship of early
Chinese journalism into the party paper Liberation Daily.
Founded in 1872 by a British entrepreneur and run by a
Chinese editorial board, Shenbao set the tone of the modern
Chinese media industry for the next 77 years.
When the CPC started to streamline the press and
publication sector (which covered newspapers and all
publications including books), they had to deal with a
diverse and flourishing newspaper market. Shanghai in the
1930s and 1940s provided a fertile ground for so called
“liberal” dailies, revolutionary agitation papers, specialised
magazines and tabloid papers lead by missionaries,
reformers, revolutionaries, artists and writers and
professional journalists. Many of these enterprises were,
just like the Shenbao, transnational in nature as Chinese and
foreign journalists collaborated in editorial boards and
competed for an international market in the cosmopolitan
city. It was a risky profession – more than 20 prominent
journalists were assassinated or executed during the
political turbulences of the Republican period.
The Communists had experimented with creating a
homogenised press in the remote area of Yan’an since the
1930s. Since Marxism itself does not provide a consistent
media theory, the Chinese formulation of guiding principles
emerged as a blend. These combined Marxist writings
received from Russia, experiences from the metropolis
markets as well as the revolutionary war and, indeed,
traditional concepts about public communication between
the ruler and the people. Mainly based on one text by Lenin,
“What is to be done” (1902), the party formulated the
“party principle” and the “mass principle” as the main
factors for regulating publication policies. From then on,
the main task of newspaper publications was to provide
correct information about orthodox party directions in order
to supply the readers with practical instructions on how to
understand the politics of the day and how to disseminate it
in correct speech. As a service trade for the people, media
had to select and supply information and establish morale
necessary for the people to fulfil their task in the course of
the revolutionary process. Thus, the main role of the media
in “serving the people” was to (re)educate and (re)form
people, rather than to investigate, inquire and instigate
debates.
Flickr/ Okinawa Soba
Above: Reading the news in old China; right, a typical
example of the propaganda system ‘We must liberate Taiwan’
is the slogan on this 1966 People’s Art Publishing poster
Flickr/ Kent Wang
Page 11
Media Management
The Propaganda system
Such aspiration obviously required effective
mechanisms of political control, i.e. strict top-down
communication routines (rather than horizontal
communications between units), which was partly
inherited from Guerrilla war practice, tight institutional
control as well as restricted access to telecommunication
such as telephones. Accordingly, from the 1950s on, the
Communist Party unified the media sector under central
leadership by bringing together governmental, party and
public institutions under the so-called “propaganda
system”, at times also called the “education plus
propaganda system”.
This context also explains why no term for
“media” existed at all in modern Chinese until the late
1980s, while everything related to “media” was covered
by the term “propaganda”. Significantly, in 2007 even
the well established Propaganda Department of the Party
changed its English name to a Publicity Department.
With the nationalisation of the media sector,
monopolisation of access to information became the
responsibility of the one and only information service
and agenda setter Xinhua, the official press agency of
the government of the PRC. National Party papers such
as the People’s Daily were tightly controlled and full
dependence on state subvention aimed at generating
total uniformity: it became imperative that headlines,
content, selection of pictures as well as the overall
layout were absolutely identical in all national papers.
Deviations were instantly banned, so that at times
newspapers had to pulp a full issue in the morning when
mistakes were detected.
Obviously this situation changed dramatically
beginning in the early reform period of the 1980s. In
fact, when the People’s Daily, People’s Liberation Army
Daily, the Guangming Daily and other papers once
again published an identical cover page shortly before
the 17th Party Congress in 2007, this was spotted by an
overseas paper and commented with the headline
“Chinese media – sudden return to 30 years ago”.
Nevertheless, the media situation in China
today is diffuse. While the government has not much
changed its policies, the fundamental nature and
function of media, the pluralisation and
commercialisation of the media market has
fundamentally changed the limits and leeway of
expression now possible for journalists. As a result,
commentator’s assessments of the media in China today
vary from euphoric statements about the liberating
effects of the technological and commercial progress to
pessimistic denouncements of a still prevalent
totalitarian control.
Media as a tool of the Party
The government still understands media as a
tool of the Party. Market oriented measures to diversify
the press and media landscape only serve the new
political goal of economic reform. Hu Yaobang
maintained in 1985 that party journalism has to function
as the mouthpiece of the party, Jiang Zemin emphasised
in 1994 the role of the media to guide the people and
provide positive role models, while Hu Jintao became
notorious for his media crackdown in 2004.
Flickr/ vincross
Over 2,000 newspapers compete for market share in China
Nevertheless, changes instigated by the reform and
opening-up policy over the last three decades have
undeniably altered the conditions of producing and
disseminating information, as well as the position and selfconception of the producers.
Arguably the biggest impact on these
developments was Deng Xiaoping’s call for acceleration of
the market economy and termination of state subventions
for the media sector, which resulted in a directive from the
General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) in
1992 to all bigger dailies to gain financial independence
within the next two years. Media corporations had to look
for new sources of income, mainly advertising revenues and
sales revenues. Rather than party directives, the battle for
audiences and audience ratings has become the dominant
factor for deciding editorial policies. It also resulted in new
staffing policies. While journalists had been kept in the
“velvet prison” of a confined and restricted but financially
safe space, they are now requested to produce breaking
news in order to keep their jobs.
Investigative journalism sells
Chinese journalists have discovered that
investigative journalism sells, which leads to the rather
paradoxical situation that major party papers, such as the
Southern Daily has advanced to become one of the most
critical and outspoken – and most popular - papers in China.
Although led by the provincial central party committee, the
Southern Daily Group is constantly in conflict with the
central government. Editors are sacked for reporting about
local incidents (such as the Taishi village in 2005, when
villagers petitioned for the dismissal of a village committee
Page 12
China Review Autumn 2009
Flickr/ RebeccaMack
The Chinese expression for a “river crab” (hexie) “wearing “three watches” (dai sange biao) is a pun on “harmonious society”
(hexie shehui) and “the three represents” (sange daibiao), while the crab itself is a traditional symbol of corrupt local officials
Director) or even imprisoned.
The central government is neither turning a blind
eye to these contradictions, nor is it immune to frequent
criticism of press restrictions from the West. This was most
apparent during the pre-Olympics period, when probably
pressure from the International Olympic Committee as
much as internal discussion resulted in a variety of reforms
to enhance the working conditions for (mainly the foreign)
journalists. Curiously, the Deputy Director of the
International Communication Office of the CPC Central
Committee, Wang Guoqing, reformulated the famous
slogan “serving the people” in 2007 by suggesting the Party
should “serve the media”, adding that, “besides informing
the public, the media act as a watchdog of government
activities”. At the same time, Anne-Marie Bradley argues in
her recent publication Managing Dictatorship that the
Propaganda Department has not at all altered its
fundamental premise to exert totalitarian control, but only
changed its rhetoric. While this is certainly true, Bradley
falls into the trap of reading normative texts issued by party
propaganda committees as reflecting actual social and
political practice.
However, the fact that the Central Propaganda
Department is losing ground in competition with powerful
ministries, such as the Ministry of Information, has become
most obvious with the advent and spread of the internet in
China over the last decade.
decade, China has the largest community of internet users in
the world, more than 113, 000 licensed internet cafes, and
many more operating illegally. For Ai Weiwei, the
prominent artist and social commentator, the internet and
blogs are the only possible channel through which he can
express his personal opinions in China. Yet his website was
shut down and only very recently made accessible again.
The growth of the internet in China
The unprecedented speed in growth of the internet
in China is truly a compelling story. Within less than a
Flickr/ Marc oh
Excessive internet use by China’s youth has raised concerns
Media Management
While there is much discussion about the
government’s measures to control the internet through high
tech firewall systems, a new “internet police” (at 30,000,
the number is ridiculously small in comparison to the
number of netizens) and persecution of individuals, it also
seems evident that the government is hitting a brick wall in
its attempt to exert total control.
Hackers have identified and published the list of
terms filtered for censorship in the internet in 2006. It is an
informative read for anyone interested in learning obscene
expressions and idioms in Chinese, or knowing how to twist
names of leading figures such as Mao Zedong and Deng
Xiaoping into character puns. But the list itself makes it
evident that it is impossible to monitor and filter all
sensitive terms such as “Cultural Revolution”, “Tiananmen
Incident” in practical terms – a Baidu or Sohu search of one
of these instantly results in several hundred thousand
websites. At the same time internet users have developed
skills to access blocked websites by using proxy servers or
VPN and SSL codes instead of standard TCP. And they
take advantage of the speed by which inopportune
information can be sent out and spread before it is detected.
For this reason, government control of the internet today is
mainly exerted through encouraging self censorship, with
occasional harsh prosecutions used as warning examples to
other potential offenders.
Excessive internet use
Academics and scholars in China tend to focus
their research on media ethics rather than media theory or
(for obvious reasons) censorship. Excessive use of the
internet by young kids hanging around in smoky internet
cafes throughout the night has created social problems and
raised safety issues. Illegal internet cafes and websites are
thus mainly shut down for reasons of youth protection or
violation of laws against pornography. Excessive internet
gaming has been identified as an “addiction”, with similar
detrimental effects on youth as drug abuse (and similar
measures introduced for withdrawal in “internet abuse
clinics”). Also, “cyber hunting” has become a critical
phenomenon of much discussion in China today, where the
internet is notoriously used as a “human flesh search
engine” against private individuals for the purpose of social
shaming, monitoring and personal revenge against the
neighbours they dislike, the girl who has left them or the
colleague who got promoted, with obvious disastrous
consequences for the people exposed.
In political terms, Chinese intellectuals and
journalists have developed a more self-confident position to
expose and criticise government censorship. While the
suggestion by some of them to use the image of a river crab
wearing three watches as the mascot for the 17th party
congress implicitly indicates that outspoken criticism is still
a risk, there are numerous instances especially in the last
years of public criticism and challenge of governmental or
party institutions.
For example, the government’s assault on the
Southern Daily in 2005 was instantly challenged by a
protest letter signed by 2,300 journalists. Jiao Guobiao,
Professor for Media and Communication at Peking
University, was particularly outspoken in formulating his
criticism of the Propaganda Department in 2004:
Page 13
‘What is the bottleneck in the cultural development of
Chinese society? It is the Central Propaganda Department
(and the entire propaganda system). What is the stumbling
block in the cultural development of Chinese society? It is
the Central Propaganda Department’
followed by an elaborate 12 point analysis and attack on
these central institutions.
Zhang Yihe, daughter of Zhang Bojun, one of the
most prominent victims of the Anti Rightist campaign
published an open letter addressed to GAPP Deputy
Director Wu Shulin, when her most recent publication on
Peking Opera stars was banned last year. In a very articulate
critique Zhang was not charging Wu for banning the book
itself but for violating the correct procedures. Similarly, Li
Datong fought back when his popular Bingdian (Freezing
Point), a supplement to the China Youth Daily (Zhongguo
Qingnianbao) was closed down in January 2006, because it
had published an academic (but unorthodox) article about
the Boxer Rebellion. Again, Li was not criticising
censorship itself but charged the propaganda department for
Chinese intellectuals and
journalists have developed a
more self-confident position to
expose and criticise government
censorship.
incorrect procedures, since some senior cadres had
addressed this issue to Li Changchun, head of the
propaganda system, who effected the punishment, instead
of approaching the head of the propaganda department Liu
Yushan.
By addressing flaws in procedures, laws and
regulations, editors are indeed striking a nerve, since the
government is trying to propagate and popularise and
“govern by law” with massive campaigns since the late
1990s. Touching the same nerve, Li Datong also adduces
economic arguments: being forced into economic
autonomy, the newspapers are indeed bound and liable to
their readers by economic contracts, i.e. subscriptions. By
this Li draws attention to the contradictory fact that media
organisation are expected to operate as business enterprises,
while according to their legal status, they are registered as
“public institution” (shiye), rather than “enterprises” (qiye),
which means their operations are first of all dictated by
politics rather than profit.
In summary, after 60 years, that is to say roughly
three decades of obsessive control and three decades of
struggling for information, pipelines and revenues while
maintaining ideological control, the media sector has
developed into one of the most compelling areas to observe
contemporary China’s contradictory challenges.
Professor Natascha Gentz is Head of Asian Studies at the
University of Edinburgh
Page 14
China Review Autumn 2009
Page 15
Book review
THE LURE OF CHINA
K AT I E L E E R E V I E W S F R A N C E S W O O D ’ S N E W B O O K
FOR THOSE OF US who cannot read enough
about how westerners see China Frances Wood’s latest
book, The Lure of China, provides a perfect book list
spanning the ages from the thirteenth to the twentieth
century. She gives just enough background and comment
on the different genres of writing on China: the first
accounts, the novels, the journalists’ reports, to whet our
appetite and allow a glimpse of treasures in store.
Frances has painstakingly researched the West’s
fascination with ‘fabulous Cathay’ and taken as her
principle for inclusion those that have become classics of
the genre. The material is vast and in the end, as she says,
the book ‘must remain something of a personal anthology
and a personal view’. But that is what makes ‘The Lure of
China’ so compulsive as fans of Frances Wood’s writing
will appreciate.
A Woman rolling up a bamboo blind in a painting by
Jiao Bingzhen, Qing Dynasty. Palace Museum , Beijing.
The Lure of China: Writers from Marco Polo to J. G. Ballard
by Frances Wood
Price: £19.99
Call 020 7079 4900 to purchase a copy
What struck me most through all the impressions
and descriptions by visitors to China is how similar a
number of their reactions were, whatever age they were
from. In particular those aspects of Beijing where the
sounds of street sellers, the whistle of pigeons flying
overhead, the grey walls and the dust storms were still
familiar characteristics for those of us visiting as late as the
early 1980s. The invasion of the car and the irrepressible
advance of steel and glass high rise over the city grid has
probably now banished that commonality of first
impression but the fascination, I would argue, continues.
China still has the ability, as Frances so clearly
demonstrates, to make ‘writers of them all’.
For a light but informative account of the different
kinds of visitors to China and in particular over the last two
centuries, the traders, the explorers, the missionaries, the
diplomats, the adventurers – the list is endless, I cannot
recommend this book more highly. My only criticism is the
squeezing in of illustrations into the margins of an already
slim book but for the pithy and delightful tasters of the
writing she surveys ‘The Lure of China’ cannot be faulted.
ISBN: 9780300154368
Katie Lee is Director of the Great Britain-China Centre
Page 16
China Review Autumn 2009
GBCC PROJECTS
R E S T R I C T I N G T H E A P P L I C AT I O N O F T H E
D E AT H P E N A LT Y
TWO THEMED WORKSHOPS WERE organised
in Beijing and Guangzhou (June 14th – 17th), as part of the
GBCC’s second EU-funded death-penalty project. In line
with the overall project’s objective of “Moving the debate
forward”, the workshops were designed for participants,
most of them practitioners, to understand the latest global
developments regarding abolition of the death penalty, as
well as to exchange on key technical questions such as
sentencing guidelines and the sentencing of co-defendants.
Prof Roger Hood, Prof Martin Wasik, as well as Saul
Lerhfreund and Parvais Jabbar formed the European expert
team. On the Chinese side, both workshops were attended
by high-level participants, including the Supreme People’s
Court judges in Beijing, High Court judges in Guangzhou,
and a strong academic team in both locations (from the
Centre for Criminal Law Studies of Beijing Normal
University, and Wuhan’s Research Centre on Criminal
Law, respectively chaired by Prof Zhao and Prof Mo).
Professor Roger Hood and Professor Mo debate a point
UK-CHINA LEADERSHIP FORUM
Peter Batey and Ambassador Fu Ying at the 2007 Forum
THE THIRD “UK-China Leadership Forum” will
take place at Ditchley Park in September. Organised and
run by the Great Britain – China Centre in conjunction with
the International Department of the Chinese Communist
Party, the Forum will bring together key representatives
from the three main UK political parties with influential
members of the Communist Party in China. This is an
opportunity for structured discussions on key issues both on
a bilateral and international basis.
This year the main themes for discussion will be
the financial crisis and implications for our political and
economic systems and the relationship between the media,
politics and bilateral relations. Participants on the UK side
will include a number of senior politicians and statesmen
such as Liam Byrne MP, Chris Huhne MP, David Lidington
MP, the Rt Hon John Prescott MP, and Sir Malcolm
Rifkind, as well as expert interlocutors. The Chinese side is
led by vice-Minister Liu Jieyi, International Department,
Chinese Communist Party as well as key officials.
The two Prime Ministers endorsed this activity as
part of the wider bilateral relationship during Gordon
Brown’s visit to Beijing in January 2008 and it is now
formally part of the British Government’s Framework for
Engagement between Britain and China.
Great Britain-China Centre
Page 17
GBCC PROJECTS
JUDGES GO GREEN
FOR THE FIRST TIME in the history
of the Ministry of Justice-funded judicial
training programme, the number of female
judges outnumbers the number of male judges.
Each year six judges are selected from the three
senior levels of court in China (Intermediate,
Higher and Supreme) to read for an LLM at
SOAS, University of London. This year, five
female and one male judge were selected and
they will specialise in environmental law.
The outgoing (11th year) judges were
full of praise for this programme which has
increased their understanding of the English
legal system, describing their year in the UK as
an ‘enriching experience’. Judge Song Zhang
described the LLM study at SOAS as ‘the most
challenging programme I’ve ever experienced in
my life’ and was inspired by the openness of the
courts and the opportunity to see first hand the
cross-examination of witnesses in trials which
does not exist in Chinese criminal law.
Professor Mo chats to Justice Minister Jack Straw. The Ministry of Justice
sponsors the judicial training programme
IMPROVING LOCAL PUBLIC FINANCE
MANAGEMENT
David Wood illustrates a point in the workshop
UK EXPERTS JANET VEITCH, Co-chair of the
UK Women’s Budget Group, and David Wood, Strategic
Advisor and Executive coach/facilitator delivered two days of
training for local government officials with specialist
knowledge on relevant public finance in Jiaozuo, Henan. The
training – which covered general principles of public finance
management and specific topics identified by the pilot areas
such as gender budgeting, continuous budgeting, and
performance budgeting – proved very popular, with 63
participants from Nanhai, Jiaozuo and neighbouring
provinces.
Half a day was devoted to a working meeting during
which the Jiaozuo financial bureau presented their future
working plan which provided the basis for the elaboration of
the pilot project. The pilot aims to implement radical changes
to Jiaozuo's current financial management practices, helping
to ensure its continued position at the forefront of local public
finance reforms in China.
Page 18
China Review Autumn 2009
CHINA AND A PEACEFUL
GLOBAL ORDER
R I C H A R D PA S C O E O N A N E N L I G H T E N I N G C O N F E R E N C E
CHINA’S FAST ECONOMIC GROWTH will
continue for the next 10-20 years because it has only gone
half way towards its goals of industrialisation and
urbanisation and will remain a low-wage economy,
according to top Chinese economist Fan Gang, Director of
the National Economic Research Institute. Fan said that
China would remain a country with low labour costs
because it still needed to create at least 200 million more
jobs for workers wanting to leave the countryside and move
into its towns and cities.
Some 90% of Chinese growth was generated by
domestic demand, he said, while only 10% of Chinese
growth was accounted for by trade in terms of value added,
he said at the conference at the House of Commons offices
in Westminster organised by the University of
Nottingham’s China Policy Institute and GBCC.
China’s high corporate savings main cause of low
domestic consumption demand
Fan also said that large increases in corporate
savings are the main cause of China’s low domestic
consumption rather than household savings. Companies in
China have become the largest saver in the economy,
compared with households and government because of
institutional problems that enabled many in the resource
industries to not pay royalties and resource taxes. As oil
prices rose to as high as US$150 a barrel, these companies
were able to keep their income as undistributed revenue,
which is the definition of corporate savings.
The second reason for high corporate savings was
the predominance of state-owned industries where
companies enjoy natural monopoly without having to pay
dividends to the state budget, said Fan who is also a
member of the Monetary Committee of the People’s Bank
of China. Corporate savings accounted for almost 50% of
total savings in 2007, compared with less than 30% in 1992,
according to figures presented by Fan. By contrast, the
share of household savings had declined from 50% to 30%
in the same period. The household savings rate had actually
kept stable at about 30% in the past 20 years, he said.
The savings trend meant that while social security
reforms would encourage households to save less and spend
more, fiscal reforms were needed in the long run to address
the problem of high savings, particularly in the corporate
sector. He debunked the myth that China could rely on its
domestic market. “China still needs exports because China
still needs more and more jobs,” he said. “It’s a balance
issue. Even in China today, purchasing power is still only
$3000 per capita GDP, and so the domestic market is too
limited. Fundamentally the Chinese want to have a peaceful
global order, and fundamentally we need globalisation, we
need both the domestic market and the global market to
finish – China’s still far away – to finish China’s
development process which is only basically halfway,” he
said.
Other experts who spoke at the conference
commended China’s long-term perspective with regard to
the global recession and suggested that China had emerged
a big winner from the crisis, which had created
opportunities for it to catch up with the US and Japan more
quickly and to become globally more influential. However,
it was imperative for China to reposition itself in the global
system to accept the global responsibility that was
commensurate with its rising power. Zhang Xiaoqiang, the
Vice-Chairman of China’s National Development and
Reform Commission, said that China was already seeing
preliminary successes from actions taken to deal with the
financial crisis.
Francois Godement, Senior Policy Fellow of
the European Council on Foreign Relations and
president of the Asia Centre at Science-Po in Paris,
said the rise of China was a challenge for the
European Union, which had been unable to develop a
coordinated response because of national policy
differences. Chinese Ambassador Fu Ying was
amongst the 130 delegates who attended the
conference, including British members of parliament,
diplomats, businessmen and academics.
For more details of this conference, including
transcripts of speeches please visit the CPI website.
Fan Gang addresses the packed conference
Richard Pascoe is Director of the University of
Nottingham’s China Policy Institute
All Party Parliamentary China Group
Page 19
APPCG
N EWS
NPC VISIT APPCG
IN MAY, THE All Party Parliamentary China
Group (APPCG) hosted a delegation from the National
People’s Congress with led by the former Ambassador to
the UK, Zha Peixin, in his capacity as Chairman of the NPC
China-UK Friendship Group. The visit was the third
exchange between the two groups following the signing of a
MOU in 2006, which aims to consolidate ties and deepen
understanding between the legislatures of the two countries.
The focal point of the visit was a roundtable with
members of the APPCG, chaired by Ben Chapman MP. Mr
Chapman acknowledged the value of frequent exchanges in
working towards a more comprehensive partnership in all
areas. Expressing agreement, Mr Zha spoke of the
momentum in the bilateral relationship, as evidenced by
recent high-level visits. Mr Zha also referred to the strength
and depth of the UK-China relationship, highlighting the
number and range of close bilateral exchanges and the
enduring health of business and economic ties.
The roundtable discussion also presented an
opportunity to air issues of concern, such as the status of the
Dalai Lama and attitudes towards Falun Gong. In response,
Mr Zha emphasized China’s progress in raising the living
standards of its population, and ongoing improvements in
the country’s welfare system. The confident defence of the
government’s policies was underlined by an emphasis on
the principle of non-interference in sovereign affairs.
During the week the delegation also met with two
‘old friends’ of China, Lord Howe of Aberavon and the Rt.
Hon. John Prescott MP. Mr Zha congratulated Lord Howe
on his “tremendous contribution” to bilateral relations. Lord
Howe commented on the pace and extent of progress in the
UK-China dialogue over the last two decades, highlighting
the importance of economic links and the enduring
significance of the handover of Hong Kong.
During discussions on the shared challenges of
environmental protection, Mr. Prescott stressed the
importance of an effective and equitable agreement in
Copenhagen, and welcomed China’s progress in the
development of green technologies and in terms of new
attitudes to economic growth. Mr Zha agreed that
international co-operation is the only hope for an effective
solution, but distinguished between the role of developed
and developing countries. The principle of ‘Common But
Differentiated Responsibility’, concluded Mr Zha, requires
richer nations to take the lead. Mr Zha and his colleague Mr
Chen also underlined China’s commitment to a sustainable
future, discussing progress in areas including deforestation,
clean coal technology and emissions trading.
The challenge presented by Climate Change
emerged as a strong theme throughout the week’s
Zha Peixin, second from left with Mr Prescott and delegates
discussions. During a meeting with members of the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, Mr
Zha and his colleagues heard about the UK’s efforts in
regards to energy efficiency and green technologies. In
other meetings, the necessity of a US-China agreement, the
development of carbon capture and storage technology,
food security and the rural-urban income gap were
discussed in detail.
Welsh leg of the tour
The delegation also visited Cardiff, where they met
with Welsh Assembly member Carwyn Jones at the Welsh
Assembly Government and discussed the continuing
development of comprehensive links between Wales and
the city of Chongqing. These links cover science, education,
culture and commerce, reflecting the desire of the Assembly
Government to diversify the Welsh economy. Mr Zha
warmly welcomed the initiative, commenting on the
importance and scale of Chongqing as well as the substance
and quality of the relationship. Discussions also touched on
trade and investment, the impact of devolution, science and
educational links and environmental protection. These were
complemented by visits to the Techniquest centre in Cardiff
(which has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
the Chongqing Science and Technology Commission), the
National Museum of Wales, the Kenfig Nature Reserve and
the environmental technology firm Inetec.
Meetings with the China-Britain Business Council
and the Lord Mayor of London, provided further
opportunity to discuss the global financial crisis and to
consider the ways in which the relationship between the UK
and China may continue to flourish in the face of
unprecedented challenges. For more information, please
contact Simon Butler, butlersr@parliament.uk.
The GBCC and APPCG
15 Belgrave Square
London
SW1X 8PS
Phone: 0207 2356696
Fax: 0207 2456885
E-mail:
contact@gbcc.org.uk
www.gbcc.org.uk
Editors:
Orlando Edwards
Perrine Lhuillier
Previous editions of
the China Review can
be downloaded from
our website:
www.gbcc.org.uk
The Great Britain-China Centre promotes understanding between the UK
and China and is the leading UK body in the development of
non-governmental relations. We deliver projects and exchange programmes
to encourage best practice in legal reform, good governance and sustainable
development. We also work to develop close relations between parliaments
in China and the UK. Our close relationships with Chinese ministries and
educational establishments are based on over 30 years of engagement and we
are the trusted partner of both sides in a wide range of exchanges.
The All Party Parliamentary China Group is the parliamentary body
dedicated to playing its part in deepening and widening the UK’s relationship
with China and specifically with the National People’s Congress and to hold
a dialogue with the Chinese Ambassador in London. With around 440
members from both houses, the group is one of the largest of its kind and
regularly holds meetings at which speakers are invited to talk on topical
matters and to engage in discussion with members of the Houses of
Parliament. Members of the group regularly receive and entertain
distinguished visitors from China and exchange delegations with their
Chinese counterparts. Within the main group is a Hong Kong Committee.
The views of contributors to China Review should not be taken as representing those of the Great
Britain-China Centre or the All Party Parliamentary China Group. If you have any comments or
contributions for the Review please contact orlando.edwards@gbcc.org.uk
F I R E D E A RT H F R O M C H I N A ’ S G O L D E N A G E
M U S E U M O F E A S T A S I A N A R T , B AT H
of East Asian Art
29th August - 6th December 2009
The Museum of East Asian Art
12 Bennett Street
Bath BA1 2QJ
tel: +44 (0)1225 464640
fax: +44 (0)1225 461718
email: info@meaa.org.uk
© Museum
The Tang Dynasty was perhaps the most culturally
diverse and prosperous period in Chinese history.
“Fired Earth from China’s Golden Age: Ceramics of
the Tang Dynasty” brings together various ceramics,
from bowls and jars through to figures and
miniatures that illustrate an important industry
during this significant period.
The Tang Dynasty was considered by
historians to be a high point in Chinese civilisation,
able to reach far and wide with use of the Grand
Canal of China, the Silk Road and maritime
routes. In this way the Tang were influenced by new
technologies and cultures from the Middle East,
India, Persia and Central Asia and beyond. The
Ceramics produced during this time, often
considered China’s “golden age” are among the most
innovative produced in China, showing both Chinese
aesthetics as well as influences from as far away as
Greece.
Tomb Guardian Beast: Pottery zhenmushou (a tomb guardian beast).
Early Tang Dynasty, 7th century.